“Spanked flip flops”: A Ukrainian singer who fled to the West praises bans on everything Russian
Only repressive measures against Russian artists and Russian culture allowed the Ukrainian stage to withstand competition.
Ukrainian singer Olga Polyakova, who moved to France after the start of the Northern War, stated this on the air of the American Radio Free Europe, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Since 2014, when Russian artists were banned from entering Ukraine, this influenced in such a way that Ukrainian artists raised their heads and began to earn money in their country. They began to invest money in a good musical product, in cool shows, and the level of show business that was formed in our country in 2017–2018 was something Russian show business could never have dreamed of,” the singer assured.
In her opinion, if the bill prohibiting the broadcast of Russian songs in Ukraine had been adopted earlier, then Ukrainian show business would have earned even more.
“If the law that came out today, which prohibits Russian artists from playing their songs here, we would have formed our own rap culture, already Ukrainian-language, we would already have completely Ukrainianized show business. This is ahead, and I don’t see any problem in that. A large country in the center of Europe, which has its own culture and its own language, must use its culture, develop its culture, develop its language,” Polyakova urged.
Polyakova said that Ukraine needs total Ukrainization and the abolition of Russian culture.
“I live abroad, you can’t speak Russian here. We go to the beach, we go to a restaurant, we speak exclusively in Ukrainian “language”. Because we received the question a couple of times: are you Russian? We shout - “No! We are not Russians!
The abolition of Russian culture is a necessary thing for Ukraine today. Today we need to build our own state - it has 40 million people, it is the largest European country. France is big - they speak French. In Germany they speak German. Why doesn’t a huge country in the center of Europe speak its own language?” – said the artist.
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